Chinese Mentally Handicapped Children Anaphora Discourse Analysis

Research in spoken narrative anaphor is an important task in modern linguistic research, however this research is severely lacking in the special case of mentally retarded children. This research will use wordless picture book narrative recounting to analyse and compare the ability to introduce and maintain references of four groups of mentally retarded children (ages 4,5,6,7 years) and four respective groups of regular children with matched intelligence, thereby undertaking thorough research and investigation into the use of references of mentally retarded children aged 4 to 7 years.By analysing the referential techniques employed by both groups upon introduction, it was discovered that there were significant differences in the usage of indefinite references. The mentally retarded group used significantly less indefinite references than the regular group, whereas the use of definite references was more frequent than the regular group; the mentally retarded group had difficulties when introducing a reference, and the narratives told by many of the children lacked coherence; this same group often omitted small or rarely seen animals, as well as there being a higher probability of misrecognising the animals; the most obvious discrepancy appeared at ages 5 to 6 years; when introducing the reference, the ratio of the type of reference can in both cases be described as NP form>indefinite reference>definite reference.By analysing the referential techniques employed by both groups upon recall, it was discovered that the proportion of indefinite references employed by the mentally retarded group was much higher than that of the regular group, moreover, that ratio at no point decreased; the regular group from the age of 4 years began to show awareness of coherence, and by the age of 6 years were showing this extremely strongly, where as the mentally retarded group did not show any such changes; pronouns used by the younger children in the mentally retarded group were indicative, but not anaphoric; when retaining references, there were significant differences between the groups at the age of 4 years, when retaining references, the ratio of the type of reference used can be described as NP form>definite reference>indefinite reference.The results of this experiment on the introduction and retention of references clearly show:the ability of the mentally retarded group to introduce and retain the appropriate references clearly lags behind that off the regular group. When introducing references, the age at which the mentally retarded group shows substantial difference is between 5 and 6 years of age, but when recalling references it is around 4 years of age,4 to 6 years of age was the time at which the mentally retarded group learned to use the appropriate references. The two groups showed identical growing trends in this respect.Finally, this paper summarizes the shortcomings in this research, suggests problems to be solved by future research, and furthermore, makes suggestions for the education of mentally retarded children based on the findings of this research.